Competition Success

Over the last few months, I and my students have been entering lots of short story writing competitions and I am delighted to report that our hard work is paying off. Today, one of my adult students, Sally-Anne, told me that her brilliant short story, about a woman landing in the library of her life, has won the writing competition run by DLR library service to celebrate the centenaries of Dun Laoighaire, Cabinteely and Shankhill libraries. She will receive her prize from the writer in residence, Chris Binchy this Wednesday evening. And also amongst my younger student writers, there has been good news: Hannah Rudden won an award with the “Dear Grace” writing competition run by the Grace Nolan Foundation and will have her story published in a book. Still in primary school, Hannah has been getting stories and poetry published for years and I am very proud of her.

But that’s not all, I, and one of my adult students, Gladys, both had stories longlisted for the Irish Times Powers Whiskey Short story competition this May, and last November another student of mine, Helena, had her story short listed for the same competition and had her story published in a beautiful anthology. So we are doing very well. Competitions are a great way to keep us motivated and working to deadlines. They also challenge us to experiment with different story lengths. This spring, my story ‘The Secret’ was short listed for the Anam Cara/Writing.ie flash fiction competition – just 250 words long.

The next competition we have set our sights on is the Bridport prize which has a closing date this Wednesday 30th May. You can check it out here: http://www.bridportprize.org.uk/